Kierkegaard on Hope and Faith (original) (raw)
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Kierkegaard on hope as essential to selfhood
Kierkegaard differs from his contemporaries Schopenhauer and Nietzsche by emphasizing the value of hope and its importance for human agency and selfhood (practical identity). In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard argues that despair involves a loss of hope and courage that is extremely common. Moreover, despair involves being double-minded by having an incoherent practical identity (although it need not be recognized as such if the agent mistakes his identity). A coherent practical identity, by contrast, requires wholehearted commitment towards ideals and the hope that our ideals are realizable. Kierkegaard develops an existential account of hope that emphasizes the interrelation between hope and despair (hopelessness), seeing both as crucial for human agency and selfhood. More specifically, Kierkegaard defends the strong view that we should always hope for the good, no matter how bad the situation might be. Put differently, Kierkegaard sees hope against hope as necessary for human agency and selfhood. His emphasis lies not so much on a description of what hope is as an analysis of what justified hope is. More specifically, Kierkegaard argues that justified hope is interrelated with charity and religious faith, and has the highest good (eternal bliss) as its proper object. As such, it belongs not only to a Judeo-Christian tradition that focuses on the Pauline triad of faith, hope, and charity but it also belongs to a philosophical tradition from Augustine and Kant that views the highest good (the summum bonum), a synthesis of virtue and happiness, as the ultimate object of hope. However, Kierkegaard goes beyond his forerunner by developing a via negativa approach to hope that starts with hopelessness and despair before it proceeds to hope. Indeed, Kierkegaard argues that proper hope, hope against hope, both presupposes and overcomes despair at every instant.
Kierkegaard on Faith and Desire: The Limits of Christianity and the Human Heart
Kierkegaard on Faith and Desire: The Limits of Christianity and the Human Heart, 2021
This dissertation analyzes and evaluates several major productions by Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). It focuses on three works Kierkegaard authored under pseudonyms – Either / Or (1843), Fear and Trembling (1843), and Philosophical Fragments (1844) – and the non-pseudonymously authored Works of Love (1847). The dissertation argues that for Kierkegaard, Christian faith is a distinctive capacity of the individual human being that enables the individual to organize their desires and pursue the good life in a way that is qualitatively superior to what is available outside of Christianity. Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s works, the dissertation identifies two elements of Kierkegaard’s presentation of Christian faith that recur throughout his authorship. The first is an axiom that undergirds Kierkegaard’s conception of the good life, namely that for the best possible life to be lived (that is, the Christian life), a person must ultimately be individually responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. The second is a complex juxtaposition between Christianity and alternative, non-Christian worldviews (collectively called ‘Paganism’ by Kierkegaard) which Kierkegaard performs to provoke his reader into making the decision to affirm Christianity. If, with the assistance of God, the individual does so (that is, has faith), their desires and motivations are reorganized to enable a higher form of happiness and a new form of moral engagement (love for the neighbor). The dissertation characterizes this juxtaposition through a stagecraft analogy: the mechane, a crane that lifts a theater actor to simulate flight. The analogy highlights the relationship of asymmetrical dependence between Kierkegaard’s accounts of Christianity and non-Christian alternatives. For an actor to take flight (happiness) with the mechane (Christianity), the hoist (faith) that suspends them must be supported by a tension force from the ground (‘Paganism’). Faith requires awareness that the theological and anthropological scaffolding that makes Christian faith possible is transcendent and distinctive. But at the same time, to avoid compromising the transcendence and distinctiveness of faith, the individual cannot completely foreclose the possibility of that which Christianity negates, for example, through rational proofs or research into the historical origins of the Christian tradition.
Kierkegaard's God and the Good Life, 2017
In recent years, a growing body of work has connected Kierkegaard with discussions of the virtues. But how do these virtue terms hang together, for Kierkegaard? Part of the answer is obvious, insofar as most such ‘Kierkegaardian virtues’ are either expressions of, or in some other way related to, faith. But can we say more than this? In this paper, inspired by an approach taken by Robert C. Roberts in his Spiritual Emotions, I explore the prospects for understanding three such notions - contentment, patience and hope - as rooted in underlying attitudes of humility and gratitude. I explore what kind of humility and gratitude is in play, before going on to consider how these attitudes might support that species of contentment that seems integral to Kierkegaard’s discourses on the lilies and the birds. How, in turn, might this give rise to patience and hope, and of what sort? The paper thus seeks to sketch something of the internal dynamics of the relations between several virtue-terms including how, for Kierkegaard, they are all rooted in an image of God as He who forgives.
The Nature and Promise of Faith in Kierkegaard
Persona y Sociedad, 2014
Con razón es Kierkegaard considerado uno de los padres del existencialismo moderno e individualista, incluso en comparación con otros pensadores del existencialismo moderno encontramos en Kierkegaard unos acentos cristianos y religiosos más claros y deliberados. La situación desfavorable del cristianismo institucionalizado en Dinamarca (desde la perspectiva teológica, socio-política y filosófica), los traumas emocionales de la infancia de Kierkegaard y su íntimo deseo incumplido de compartir la vida con su querida Regina lo llevó a la supervivencia y a la posterior articulación de su actitud interior de ansiedad, pasión y audacia (tan típicas de Kierkegaard). En su concepción de la fe está volcando su atención hacia las cuestiones fundamentales de la ética sobre las que contempla cada individuo según su experiencia interior subjetiva. Sin embargo, la fe auténtica va más allá del nivel estético y ético de la reflexión. No pasa a un estado del quietismo autocomplaciente, sino aporta el efecto movilizador a la vida del individuo con graves consecuencias éticas y sociales. A pesar de que el concepto Kierkegaardiano de la fe no tuvo ningún impacto significativo en sus contemporáneos, influyó de forma significativa los círculos intelectuales de los siglos XX y XXI. Como respuesta a la heterogénea recepción del mensaje de Kierkegaard, este estudio recomienda vincular su énfasis en la existencia auténtica del individuo haciendo hincapié en el carácter comunitario de la fe como un fenómeno teológico-sociológico, derivado de la existencia de una iglesia visible.
An Enquiry into Kierkegaard's Concept of Faith
duo.uio.no
This Master’s Thesis aims at presenting a comprehensive picture of Kierkegaard’s concept of faith. It particularly stresses the fact that Kierkegaard argues for faith on an existential basis, and therefore tries to show how faith must not simply be understood as an absolute belief in God, but as a state that has a specific existential function. It argues, furthermore, that this function is to place man in a state of emotional autonomy, which it understands as a state wherein the individual is immune to being adversely affected emotionally by exterior circumstances – it is immune to angst and despair.
2009
Kierkegaard's writings are interspersed with remarkable stories of love, commonly understood as a literary device that illustrates the problematic nature of aesthetic and ethical forms of life, and the contrasting desirability of the life of faith. Sharon Krishek argues that for Kierkegaard the connection between love and faith is far from being merely illustrative. Rather, love and faith have a common structure, and are involved with one another in a way that makes it impossible to love well without faith. Remarkably, this applies to romantic love no less than to neighbourly love. Krishek's original and compelling interpretation of the Works of Love in the light of Kierkegaard's famous analysis of the paradoxicality of faith in Fear and Trembling shows that preferential love, and in particular romantic love, plays a much more important and positive role in his thinking than has usually been assumed.
Colloquium: the Australian and New Zealand theological review., 2019
Few events have the potential to be as destructive for individuals, groups, and communities as suicide. By drawing on the theology of Søren Kierkegaard, this article aims to elucidate a perspective which contains theo-ethical, psychological, and pastoral import for those contemplating, or faced with, the tragic prospect of guilt-motivated suicide. This is principally done by highlighting the nature and centrality, for Kierkegaard, of God’s unconditional and unchanging love in Christ. The pertinent offshoots of this for the present article are twofold: firstly, every individual is, at all times, held in being by divine love; secondly and correlatingly, the task of every human being of conforming his or her will to the selflessness of God cannot be foreclosed—put differently, perpetual love entails perpetual hope. Despite not usually being regarded as a theologian whose work is relevant to public issues, I thus claim that Kierkegaard provides resources for a robust position against individual self-execution out of guilt.
Risk, Loss, and Finding Happiness after Despair: Lessons from Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, 2022
Risk is central to any meaningful life, says Kierkegaard. Yet, risks don’t always pan out. So, how do we recover when things go south? The answer, Kierkegaard claims, lies in religion: faith is the cure for despair. A crucial example comes from his neglected discourse on Anna the Prophetess. Anna takes a risk and marries her beloved—only to have him pass away. Distraught, she turns to God. She copes with her loss by praying and fasting in the temple. My paper explores how religion is supposed to help Anna. I identify two answers in Kierkegaard’s corpus. The first is a quasi-stoic position. Kierkegaard sometimes says finite goods aren’t the proper objects of deep care. Thus, Anna was wrong to devote herself wholeheartedly to her husband. She should’ve clung to something eternal, like God. This first answer suffers from “otherworldliness,” however. Better is Kierkegaard’s second. He sometimes says faith isn’t about leaving behind the finite world. It’s how we maintain hope in it. Turning to God helps because “God is this—that everything is possible.” I conclude by discussing the conditions for cultivating such religious hope. Drawing on Sickness, I argue it’s not something we can do on our own.